Wikipedia:Wiki Guides/What was your new user experience

All Wikipedians had a "New User experience" - they all had to start somewhere!

Many have kindly given us their stories of those early, tentative days of how it felt to be a new user on Wikipedia. If you are already an editor, please go to the talk page to add your own section and tell us your story.

You can view those stories on the talk page (click here), but here are a few teasers!


 * Wilhelmina Will: "Even after I started editing with my account, I only felt comfortable doing the simplest of edits; I remember thinking it would be a huge time-consuming task to add in an external link ... I've managed to gain a pretty decent understanding of how the different fields of editing in Wikipedia operate. A considerable amount of this comes from interacting with other users"
 * Carcharoth "It may never be too early to ask people what exactly they want from their Wikipedia experience, and tailor things to help them that way."
 * Jsayre64 "I definitely did not enjoy the first several weeks after I created an account here on Wikipedia, in July of last year. I was annoyed and puzzled by image problem notices and I felt as if I were a burden on everyone else. But then I signed up to join the friendly editors at WikiProject Oregon and I began to realize how I could actually help an encyclopedia."
 * Pfly "I was telling her about a possible ancestor-cousin of mine who was a pirate captain, and how a recent book had used his hanging as a kind of milestone, an end to the "Golden Age of Piracy". She said, "let's see if he's on Wikipedia". He wasn't, so she created a page in less than a minute. I was surprised and amazed."
 * The_Interior "My first real interaction with another editor was my requesting some Czech translation, which was replied to almost immediately and in great detail(the reply can still be seen at the top of my talk). I have to say this was my "pivotal" moment which led to further editing adventures."
 * Anna Frodesiak "New editors and prospective editors should know loud and clear, that Wikipedia is composed of others just like themselves -- that there is no government that audits and approves their edits."